With a height of 46 cm and a weight of only 2 kg, the Manus is small in size but it has a sophisticated overall mechanical structure. Manus has 17 degrees of freedom (DOF); there are 17 joints powered by motors which must be controlled simultaneously for the robot to even stand up (if un-powered, the structure simply crumples into a heap just like how a bicycle chain would). In order to realize a natural gait, the joint design of the robot is modeled on the structure of the human body, with each 6-DOF leg enabling the robot to imitate most of the human walking motions. The robot senses its environment through a combination of eight force sensors, one tilt sensor, an IR sensor, a digital compass and a video camera. To coordinate its sensory information and walking, the robot uses a two-layered control system. The high-level control layer gathers and processes the information from the sensors, decides on the necessary walking motions and directions, and sends commands to the low-level controller. The low-level control then processes inputs from the tilt and force sensors, and realizes the walking motions and any special motions such as kicking a ball.

The MaNUS Humanoid has won a number of international awards:

• Second prize, Humanoid dash, FIRA RoboWorld Cup USA 2007
• First Prize, Humanoid Champion, FIRA RoboWorld Cup Germany 2006
• First Prize, Humanoid Champion, FIRA RoboWorld Cup Singapore 2005
• First Prize, Humanoid, Open category, Singapore Robotic Games 2004
• Second Prize, Humanoid Champion, FIRA RoboWorld Cup Korea 2004
• First Prize, Humanoid Champion, FIRA RoboWorld Cup Austria 2003
• Second Prize, robot soccer competition, Singapore Robotic Games 2002
• Second Prize, Benchmark category, FIRA RoboWorld Cup Beijing 2001